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Maasai Migrants Series

Wed, 5 Sep 2018 11:07:00 GMT

Maasai Migrants Series
Buy Now: $320.00

The seven videos contained in this DVD were made in Tanzania between 2008 and 2010 by participants in the Maasai Migrants Field School, directed by Peter Biella of San Francisco State University's Program in Visual Anthropology. The primary purpose of the videos in the series is to educate urban and rural Maasai about the consequences of migration, especially its relationship to poverty and the spread of HIV. The films have been produced through a continuing collaboration with Maasai-led and other NGOs, and they are being screened and discussed in Maasai regions throughout Tanzania. Their purpose is to trigger emotional reactions that prompt viewers to engage in important — though otherwise rare and uncomfortable — conversations, about poverty, migration, and sexual practices. The series also constitutes a self-critical history of a project in applied anthropology and gives an example for applied practitioners who may wish to use video in their work.

About the films:

Maasai Migrants (Dir. Peter Biella, 22 min, 2008)

This is the first film completed in the Maasai Migrants Series, the multi-year collaborative exploration of applied anthropological videos contained in this DVD. Planned in close collaboration with Maasai organizers and local migrants, the film depicts the appalling conditions experienced by migrants in Dar es Salaam - the dangerous and underpaid work of night watchmen, and the tenuous existence of Maasai woman who, without male protection, are always at risk of exploitation. The video is divided into seven 3-minute vignettes, each giving a different facet of the Maasai community displaced by migration. Rich with data, the vignettes trigger audience discussions about the challenges of poverty and the push and pull of city life. A film about the scripting, shooting and screening of Maasai Migrants is recorded in Subject to Change, a video contained in this DVD. There, emphasis is placed on how the video has been understood by urban and rural Maasai viewers.

Subject to Change (Dir. Shamia Sandles, 21 min, 2009)

Subtitled A Freirean Case Study in Applied Visual Anthropology, this film presents the theoretical assumptions and screening strategy of films in the Maasai Migrants Series. It does so through a history of the Series' first season, the scripting, shooting and screening of Maasai Migrants (also contained on this DVD). Included in Subject to Change is documentary footage of meetings with production collaborators — an American professor and his student who made this film, Maasai night watchmen, homeless Maasai women, Maasai intellectuals and members of a Maasai-led NGO. These meetings reveal the development of the themes and documentary script of the film, and how they are designed to promote discussion among urban and prospective migrants living in rural homesteads. Subject to Change also provides an understanding of errors made by project members in choosing the wrong venues for screening and in failing to prepare post-screening facilitators for their task of promoting audience discussion after the showings. Finally, Subject to Change presents footage of four post-screening events in different locations — a church, an urban market, a school and a rural homestead. The analysis of Maasai Migrants' goals and strategy, supplemented by Maasai viewers' subtle comments on the film, reveal a great potential for an applied visual anthropology.

Maasai Speak Out on HIV and AIDS (Dir. Biella; research & footage by Thomas Sengale, 13 min, 2009)

Ilmurran is the most-frequently screened trigger film in the Maasai Migrants repertoire. Like the others, its goal is to provide critical education to displaced Maasai throughout Tanzania. When the film is screened with a skilled discussion facilitator, it allows an unprecedented opportunity for Maasai audiences to reflect on the realities and dangers of migration. Longido Waterhole and Longido Homestead, both included on this DVD, record Maasai viewers as they watch and discuss this film. Ilmurran: Young Warriors and the City provides discussion material concerning increased exposure to HIV, and the attraction of migration as a means of survival in the face of encroaching poverty. Following a strategy of collaborative, applied visual anthropology, the filmmakers worked with university educated Maasai to document the day-to-day lives of three young Maasai brothers (ilmurran, "warriors"). The young men all live at the same homestead in central Tanzania. Using interviews and vérité footage, the film invites the brothers to discuss discrimination, homelessness, and disease in the cities. It also highlights how their different ages influence their attitudes toward traditional Maasai values. Before he became ill, the eldest advocated migration as an expression of independence and courage; the youngest sees no purpose in "wandering" and advocates farming, a means of subsistence rejected by most Maasai. Ilmurran illustrates how poverty and migration have reshaped Maasai identity.

Ilmurran: Young Warriors and the City (Dir. Michael Crammond and Kellen Prandini, 22 min, 2010)

Excerpts from Changa Revisited (Dir. Peter Biella and Leonard Kamerling, 17 min, 2012)

Composed of selections from a feature-length documentary, Excerpts from Changa Revisited depicts the shocking clarity with which three Ilparakuyo Maasai women understand the dissolution of their Ilparakuyo community. They describe their homestead as torn by human and livestock diseases, widespread alcoholism among men, and the increase of poverty, disrespect, migration and violence. Changa Revisited was filmed in a community that is very close to Dar es Salaam: for that reason, the community is experiencing the full destructive impact of migration and access to city life. Changa Revisited is therefore a cautionary tale to other, more isolated, Maasai communities that are currently less impacted by the crises of migration and HIV depicted in the film. Another video contained in this DVD, Longido Homestead, records women in a relatively isolated Kisongo Maasai community who watch Changa Revisited and discuss the fate of their less fortunate Maasai sisters to the south. The story of Changa represents to them — and to others in very isolated Maasai communities — what the future may bring.

Longido Waterhole (Dir. Peter Biella and Leonard Kamerling, 8 min, 2010)

All of the films in the Maasai Migrants DVD explore a technique of applied anthropology in which films are used to trigger often passionate post-screening discussions among Maasai audiences. Longido Waterhole, like its companion, Longido Homestead, documents such a discussion. As the film opens, a dozen Kisongo Maasai men have just viewed Ilmurran: Young Warriors and the City, one of the Series' trigger films about social change. The viewers, who live more than two hundred miles north of the community where the Ilmurran video was shot, launch into a discussion about the profound changes faced by their own community. They do not concern themselves with the principle theme of the Ilmurran film, i.e., the crisis of young Maasai migrating to the city. Instead, the film triggers a discussion of their own related crisis — the city migrating to them. Rapid regional development with new highways, foreign workers and permanent dwellings are all encroaching on their once isolated desert grazing land. Comments divide along age lines: senior warriors criticize their "fathers" for facilitating the arrival of outsiders and for their adherence to "outmoded" Maasai traditions. Elders reply that traditions are the only value that Maasai should preserve. The discussion at the Longido Waterhole gives insight into the ideological rifts concerning modernization among different age groups of Maasai. It also shows how using a film that focuses on one facet of modernization may trigger discussions of others that are more pertinent locally.

Longido Homestead (Dir. Peter Biella and Leonard Kamerling, 8 min, 2010)

Like its companion piece, Longido Waterhole and other videos on this DVD, Longido Homestead is part of the Maasai Migrants Series, a multi-year exploration of the use of applied anthropological media in facilitating social change through the screening and discussion of trigger films. Longido Homestead's women viewers are asked to discuss a video clip from Ilmurran: Young Warriors and the City, and a segment of Changa Revisited (both contained on this DVD). Unlike their male counterparts recorded in Longido Waterhole, these women viewers stay focused on the themes of the films they viewed. Like the men, however, the women understand the film topic in ways that differ according to their age. Older women declare that traditional Maasai medicines are an effective cure of AIDS. Their daughters, adult women who have visited clinics and have some formal education, know differently. Longido Homestead shows how the screening of trigger films can create an unprecedented opportunity for open discussion between age grades, opportunities in which younger women may contradict and educate their elders. The film also reveals an important strategy in the use of trigger films among communities that are as thoroughly sex-segregated as the Maasai. The women are only able to speak frankly with one another when the filmmakers persuade their husbands to leave.

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Friends, Fools, Family

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:53:00 GMT

Friends, Fools, Family
Buy Now: $320.00

Jean Rouch is known to many worldwide as a French anthropologist and innovative filmmaker. Much of his work is linked to the birth of cinéma vérité. However, Rouch's fifty-year involvement with a particular group of people in Niger shines a more personal light on his work - one of friendship and collaboration. Together with this group, Rouch made numerous ethnographic films and developed their own cinematographic style. These films have been termed 'ethno-fictions.'

In 2003, two Danish anthropologists and filmmakers went to Niger to make a film with Rouch's friends. Their film was going to be an exploration of the methods of the group. It became a story about how this unique collaboration came to change the lives of both the filmmaker and his friends.

This DVD also contains a 15 minute clip of Rouch's friend and collaborator Damouré talking about the film Jaguar.

Visit the Jean Rouch tribute website.

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From Vérité to Virtual

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:53:00 GMT

From Vérité to Virtual
Buy Now: $320.00

This documentary presents panel and roundtable conversations with leading documentary filmmakers, artists and ethnographers about the future of visual anthropology. Recorded at Temple University, the targeted conversations raise questions, among others, of collaboration, aesthetics, uses of new media, and how to build a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges methods of the social sciences, humanities and fine arts. Uniquely, participants came together from across the disciplines to join in discussion about what the agenda for interdisciplinary visual anthropology might look like in this era of globalization. The responses range from the theoretically provocative to the practical. Participants include symposium panelists Phillip Alperson, Kelly Askew, Rebecca Baron, Michel Brault, Kathy Brew, Roderick Coover, Jayasinhji Jhala, Paul Stoller, and Lucien Taylor, as well as roundtable discussants Warren Bass, Noel Carroll, Kimmika Williams and others.

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Jean Rouch and His Camera in the Heart of Africa

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 11:12:00 GMT

Jean Rouch and His Camera in the Heart of Africa
Buy Now: $320.00

"Filming filmmakers is not an easy task: from time to time there are glimpses of show-off tactics, private jokes which make holiday and family films so unbearable. To undertake such a project in Africa is almost acrobatic. There are so many obstacles ... Philo Bregstein and Dutch television, no doubt for the first time in the history of world television, have managed to make a successful film on filmmakers from Niger, avoiding all the standard traps lying around for Western travelers, thoughtless givers of 'poisoned presents.'"

-- Jean Rouch

Jean Rouch and His Camera in the Heart of Africa provides an in-depth look at the film work of Jean Rouch and his associates from Niger who participated in the production of many of Rouch's Niger-based films. Most of the camera and technical work was accomplished by Niger filmmakers. Bregstein, Rouch, Damoure, Lam, their friend Tollou and others converse about filmmaking and filmmakers who have had historical influence in the field; segments from several of Rouch's earlier film works are interspersed with the filming in Niger and with interviews. Some of the films from which clips are included and discussed by Rouch and Bregstein are Chronicle of a Summer, Moi, un Noir, Tourou et Bitti, Battle on the Great River, Jaguar, Les Maitres Fous, The Lion Hunters, and Petit a Petit.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Cinema du Reel, 1979

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Morning With Asch

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 14:50:00 GMT

Morning With Asch
Buy Now: $320.00

In the Spring of 1994, Timothy Asch, internationally known and honored filmmaker, was dying of cancer. Educator, anthropologist, and driving force behind the Visual Anthropology Review, he is best known for his groundbraking films on the Yanomamö, made with Napoleon Chagnon, and the Indonesian films, made with Patsy Asch, James Fox, E. Douglas Lewis, and Linda Connor.

His colleague and fellow visual anthropologist, Jayasinhji Jhala, visited him at his home in Los Angeles to conduct a videotaped interview from which came this edited version. Jhala, a professor of anthropology at Temple University, makes us aware of the influence of the filmmaker on the filmed subject and vice versa. Tim took this opportunity to express his views about his life and work, revealing intimate details that give us perspective - not only about this complex individual, but also about the reality of confronting death.

Collaboration was a central theme for Tim Asch, beginning with anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon, and later continuing with the anthropologists mentioned above. He also worked with John Marshall in the late 1960s, editing Marshall's !Kung San Bushmen films shot in the 1950s. Excerpts from Asch's films, representing each of these periods, are woven into the dialogue.

For those who never knew Timothy Asch in life, this interview may offer some guidance on the way to explore the invaluable legacy of his films.

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Moyngo

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 14:50:00 GMT

Moyngo
Buy Now: $295.00

The Ikpeng community acts out the myth of the origin of their tattooing ceremony. The mythical hero and shaman Maragareum dreams about a disaster in his friend Eptxum's village. Arriving in this village, he finds everyone dead, and so he hides at nightfall to see the spirits return. Hunting, dancing and making special porridge and decorations, the spirits prepare for the ritual in which they tattoo their children. Maragareum watches and learns learns the Moyngo ceremony from the spirits of the dead, and those watching the video are able watch and learn about it as well.

Films in the Indigenous Video Makers series

Dancing with a Dog
From the Ikpeng Children to the World
Kinja Iakaha, A Day in the Village
The Living Forest
Moyngo
Nguné Elü
One Must Be Curious
A Path to Live
The Rainy Season
Shomõtsi
Trainees for the Future
Wapté Mnhõnõ, The Xavante's Initiation
Wai'á Rini, The Power of the Dream

Disclaimer on Naming:
Please be aware that this documentary may include outdated or potentially offensive language. Such terms are not endorsed by DER but are presented in their original context to promote awareness, education, and discussion. Learn more about DER’s efforts to use reparative language and honor the preferred names of Indigenous communities by clicking here.

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New Era

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 14:11:00 GMT

New Era
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Residents of the Huni Kuin village of São Joaquim, on the river Jordão, collaborate in making a record their daily lives on video. New Era shows methods of fishing, cutting rubber trees, making hammocks and handcrafts, and religious observance. Augustinho, village shaman and patriarch, his wife and father-in-law, remember the fetters of the rubber plantations and talk about how things have changed. The Huni Kuin practice a mixture of white people's customs and their own; we see a soccer match against a white team, accompanied by much cheering and heckling, and trip to a town upriver includes buying items with a debit card. With their land demarcated, the Hunikui can once again teach their traditions to their children, but while Brazil is celebrating "Indian's day," the Indians themselves are keenly aware of what has been changed or lost in their culture as a result of contact with whites.

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Ngat is Dead

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 14:11:00 GMT

Ngat is Dead
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What do anthropologists mean when they claim to study the cultural traditions of others by participating in them? This film follows the Dutch anthropologist Ton Otto, who has been adopted by a family on Baluan Island in Papua New Guinea. Due to the death of his adoptive father, he has to take part in mortuary ceremonies, whose form and content are passionately contested by different groups of relatives.

Through prolonged negotiations, Ton learns how Baluan people perform and transform their traditions and, not least, what role he plays himself. The film is part of long-term field research, in which filmmaking has become integrated in the ongoing dialogue and exchange between the islanders and the anthropologist.

“Straddling the permeable genres of ethnographic, participatory, and narrator-driven documentary, this one-hour DVD will be an extremely useful teaching resource. It presents anthropological insights prompted by filmmaking grounded in long-term familiarity and involvement with a community. It also demonstrates the benefits of an anthropologically trained film crew. ...As an ethnographic film that demonstrates the value and developing insights of long-term fieldwork, this is excellent.”
— Mike Poltorak, University of Kent, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Volume 16, Issue 4, December 2010

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Freiburger Film Forum, Germany, 2009

Royal Anthropological Institute International Festival of Ethnographic Film, Leeds, England, 2009

Prix du Patrimoine Culturel Immatériel, Jean Rouch International Film Festival, Paris, 2008

Beeld voor Beeld, Bogotá, Colombia, 2008

DIEFF, Delhi International Ethnographic Film Festival, Delhi, India, 2008

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Rouch's Gang

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 08:59:00 GMT

Rouch's Gang
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In 1991, Jean Rouch started work on his new feature film Madame l'Eau, much of which was shot in Holland. The documentary Rouch's Gang follows the film crew and provides a glimpse behind the scenes as Jean Rouch and his four friends from Niger make their film. By providing an outsider's view of Madame l'Eau, the documentary provides insight into how Rouch approaches his films.

Jean Rouch's position in film is paradoxical: he is one of the most important post-war French film-makers, while also being one of the least known. This is because he directs his films outside the commercial circuit. He has made more than 140 films, many of which have an anthropological character. As starting points he uses: reconstruction, fiction and provocation. Examples are Jaguar (1954/67), Moi un Noir (1957), Chronique d'un Ete (1961), and Corcorico, Monsieur Poulet (1974). With these films Rouch had a significant influence on the early period of the Nouvelle Vague. Rouch was inspired by the work of Flaherty, Vertov and Rossillini. He has raised the improvisational approach with non-professional actors to an art form.

Most of his fiction films were shot with four African friends; Damoure Zika, Lam Ibrahim Dia and Tallou Mouzourane as actors and Moussa Hamidou as sound man. Rouch has been their friend for more than forty years. This bond is the theme of the documentary Rouch's Gang, a bond of friendship which has become increasingly complex and can no longer be described in a simple way.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Margaret Mead Film Festival

IWF International Film Festival

ICAES Film Festival

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The Spirit of TV

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 07:47:00 GMT

The Spirit of TV
Buy Now: $295.00

Beginning with the arrival by canoe of a TV and VCR in their village, The Spirit of TV documents the emotions and thoughts of the Waiãpi as they first encounter their own recorded images and those of others. Viewing news broadcasts and videos of other Brazilian native peoples, the Waiãpi see the power of images to facilitate memory preservation and political awareness. Some people worry, though about the invasive spirits of outsiders that can come through the TV. Another concern is the negative exposure that might result from the Waiãpi broadcasting their own images.

Films in the Video in the Villages series

Daritidzé, Trainee Healer
The Girl's Celebration
Jungle Secrets
Pemp
The Spirit of TV
Video Cannibalism
Video in the Villages Presents Itself
Video in the Villages

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